International Viewpoint - online socialist magazine

Ruptures: The New Manifesto of the Fourth International

Michael Löwy — 2026-01-22T11:48:11Z

The new Manifesto of the Fourth International is available in English from Resistance Books London or the IIRE, Amsterdam. This “Manifesto for an ecosocialist revolution - Break with capitalist growth”, is a document that marks a new stage in the history of the movement founded in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his comrades.
Since Babeuf's Manifesto of the Equals (1796) and the Communist Manifesto (1848), many documents of this kind have emerged throughout the history of the workers' movement. (…)

- Features / Fourth International, Features, Ecosocialism

The Unexpected Pope

Michael Löwy — 2025-05-12T11:51:46Z

The Marxist scholar proposes a reading of the ruptures that marked Francis's papacy, particularly his commitment to the poor and his ecological sensitivity. Was Bergoglio merely a parenthesis in the long history of the Catholic Church or the beginning of a different path?

- Features / Ecology and the Environment, Religion

Discussing the Climate Crisis: Dubious Notions & False Paths

Michael Löwy — 2024-11-01T08:01:48Z

In the convential truisms about climate crisis, we find a large number point — knowingly or unknowingly — in false directions. I am not referring here to denialist speeches (like those of Senator James Inhofe, who recently died), but to those who claim to offer “green” or “sustainable solutions.”

- IV598 - November 2024 / Ecology and the Environment, Ecosocialism

Surrealism as a revolutionary movement

Michael Löwy — 2024-09-11T10:03:52Z

Surrealism is not, and has never been, a literary school or an "avant-garde" artistic movement (like Cubism or Fauvism), but a vision of the world, a way of life, and an eminently subversive attempt to re-enchant the world. It is also a utopian and revolutionary aspiration to "transform the world" (Marx) and "change life" (Rimbaud): two identical slogans, according to André Breton. It is an adventure that is at once poetic and political, magical and playful. It began in Paris a hundred years ago, in 1924. It continues today.

- Features / Features

End of the Nightmare in Brazil?

Michael Löwy — 2022-10-05T09:11:12Z

“Lula is likely to win in the second round on October 30. But Bolsonaro, following the example of his political model, Donald Trump, has already announced that he will not recognize an unfavorable result.”

- IV573 - October 2022 / Brazil

Hasta siempre Helena!

Michael Löwy — 2022-02-21T18:25:21Z

“You left us when Chile had just got rid of Pinochetism, you would have liked to celebrate that with us.”

- In Memoriam - Obituaries and appreciations / France, Obituary, Chile

Friedrich Engels and Primitive Communism

Michael Löwy — 2021-12-24T11:18:15Z

In November 2020, socialists around the world celebrated the bicentenary of the birth of Friedrich Engels. It is a mistake, often repeated, to regard Engels as a mere popularizer of Marx's ideas. Not only did he contribute, with Marx in 1844-48, to the formation of a new worldview — the philosophy of praxis or historical materialism — but he developed an analysis and argument on subjects that Marx did not want or could not study.

- Features / Marxism, Features, Ecosocialism

Either-Or: Rosa Luxemburg and Internationalism

Michael Löwy — 2021-09-30T16:40:59Z

“[E]ither we stop, by pulling the revolutionary emergency brakes, the train of modern capitalist industrial civilization, or it will continue its suicidal course toward an abyss: ecological catastrophe.”

- Features / Marxism, Historical events and figures

Rosa Luxemburg & Trotsky

Michael Löwy — 2021-09-30T16:40:46Z

“This article, if I remember well, was published around 1979 in the French Journal Quatrième Internationale. If I would rewrite it today, I would probably give greater emphasis on the positive side of Rosa Luxemburg's and young Leon Trotsky's views on political organization. But I still agree with the essential argument of the paper, bringing together both thinkers, as the guiding inspirations of the Fourth International.” [Author's note]

- Features / Marxism, Historical events and figures

The revolutionary relevance of Rosa Luxemburg

Michael Löwy — 2021-04-22T18:57:32Z

“A real re-foundation of communism in the twenty-first century will not be able to do without the revolutionary, Marxist, democratic, socialist and libertarian message of Rosa Luxemburg.”

- Features / Marxism, Historical events and figures